Open sources programs offer free alternatives to popular Adobe products

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Over the years, Adobe has gobbled up companies like Aldus and Macromedia, incorporated those company's products into their own offerings and continued to enhance and offer top-of-the line design and development software available to those who create websites, illustrations, newsletters, business cards, motion graphics, videos, audio and so on.

When Adobe decided to offer subscription services for their products, they made them more affordable for designers and developers on tight budgets, but there's still a monthly fee that must be paid or you lose access to the subscription software. That means that if you pay every month for 24 months and then you can't or decide not to renew in month 25, you lose access to your Adobe subscription and the only way to get it back is to start paying again.

Some of you may be saying, "I'll just get a physical copy, and I can keep using it even if it's outdated." No, you can't. Adobe has also decided not to continue to offer physical versions of its applications after version CS6, and they are already in their second version of CC. The only way to get the programs after version CS6 is through download.

So...

Combining the fact that you have to pay monthly to stay up-to-date with Adobe software and the fact that you can only get newer versions via download, and if you're one of those people who can't or don't want to pay monthly for your applications there's always open-source applications that are free and downloadable.

In particular, there are three open-source applications that compare to three of Adobe's most popular products.

If you're looking for an open-source product like Adobe Photoshop, try GIMP.

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Faydra Deon started out hand-coding websites in 1999 and moved into making more dynamic sites using third-party applications. In recent years, she has almost exclusively designed and customized themes for WordPress. See some of her sites at Hyper-linx. Faydra Deon is also a DC Social Media Examiner.